Japan has to have a general election, constitutionally, on or before 30 August 2013; knowing Japan it's very likely that the election will be at the earliest about a year from now, but it's still worthwhile starting a thread for it, I think, because trends in Japanese politics frequently take kind of a while to get going and then do not change particularly easily except with a change in Prime Ministers.

Currently the ruling party is the Democratic Party of Japan, which was formed from dissidents from the formerly-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (which is actually conservative, or rather almost Right-Hegelian in character) and various centrist or social-liberal reformist parties claiming to be the ideological heirs of the liberalizing Taisho Era between the world wars about fifteen years ago. It was swept into power in the 2009 election after fifty-five years of the Liberal Democratic Party being the largest party in the Diet, which it controlled for all but two of those years (those two were in the early nineties when Japan was ruled by a fractious eight-party alliance called the Eight-Party Alliance after the LDP lost an outright majority in the 1993 election). The Prime Minister, Noda Yoshihiko, has been in power since late last summer, when he replaced Kan Naoto, who in turn replaced Hatoyama Yukio (the guy who actually won the last election) the year before that. There's a pattern of these men steadily losing popularity from initial heights.

The DPJ actually does have several substantive accomplishments to its name, such as introducing subsidies for young families, abolishing state high school tuition fees, restoring support for single mothers (which was remarkable in a socially very normative country like Japan), extending unemployment insurance, introducing free services for low-income disabled people, and banning age discrimination in the provision of medical care. However, the first two DPJ Prime Ministers were actively terrible at messaging, and Noda seems to view not messaging very much at all as a source of some kind of personal pride. He's lost a lot of support because of this but he is still retaining better approvals than either of his predecessors were by the end. Noda was Kan's Minister of Finance and Hatoyama's Senior Vice Minister of Finance. Before that he was an apparently very diligent but not especially interesting back-bencher and directed public relations for the DPJ in its early years, which is interesting considering his current dislike of press conferences and spin (then again, public relations for the DPJ during its early years sucked, so maybe it's not that surprising). He's very highly respected and something of a center-left technocrat; he comes from a distinctly impoverished background, which is even more unusual for Japanese politicians than it is in most countries. One of my professors is a big supporter of his.

The leader of the LDP, which is perceived to have won the last upper house elections two years ago on points even though it didn't actually gain all that many seats, is Tanigaki Sadakazu, who was Minister of Finance for the popular rightist reformer Koizumi Jun'ichirō, the last Japanese Prime Minister to serve more than a year or so, from 2003 to 2006, and Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport under Koizumi's centrist LDP successor Fukuda Yasuo in 2008. Before that he worked in food safety and for a bunch of government commissions. He was considered a moderate at that time but has transformed into a notably right-wing demagogue, even by Japanese standards. At one point Kan offered him a grand coalition for some inexplicable reason, even though the DPJ has never at any point in the past three years not commanded a large majority in the House of Representatives and has not lost its plurality in the House of Councillors. Tanigaki is popular with a certain segment of the population but he's not as able to deflect controversy as Koizumi was. He reminds me more of Abe Shinzō, but I could be off-base on that.

Noda is from Chiba, a formerly rural rice-farming prefecture east of Tokyo that has been undergoing an ambiguous economic restructuring since Japan's largest airport was built there from the sixties to the eighties (it took that long because of civil unrest over its construction). The DPJ is strong in areas like this, east and north of the Tokyo--Kitakyushu built-up core megalopolis, particularly on Hokkaido, in the inland parts of Tohoku, and in the less-urbanized, or not-quite-as-urbanized, parts of the Kanto Plain (although the latter is a traditionally right-leaning area and DPJ inroads into it are rather recent). It's also strong in Nagoya and parts of Osaka.

Tanigaki is from Kyoto, the old capital of Japan and still the site of most of Japan's traditionally important imperial and religious institutions and the driver of most of the country's high culture (not popular or mass culture). The LDP is strong in the traditional, not-quite-as-urban western part of Japan and in the parts of the built-up megalopolis where the DPJ isn't (sometimes even where it is; Tokyo and Osaka, the two largest cities, are actually quite swingy). It was also once able to gain votes in Tohoku, but if it campaigned against the government there this time it would probably be seen as immensely crass, since it would be campaigning against the government's 'earthquake record'. It still might win back parts of Tohoku without putting much into it, but most of north-eastern Japan does genuinely have seemed to have shifted to the left.

Even though the DPJ Prime Ministers all seem to end up pretty unpopular, there's little to no desire to replace Noda, who's much more stable personally and professionally than Hatoyama or Kan, and there's not much enthusiasm among the voters about getting the LDP back either. They've been trading extremely narrow polling leads for a while and the 'No party' (i.e. either abstention or pure swing voters) line in the polls has been inching up into the high forties. Of course, a lot of this will probably change when the campaign actually starts. Both party leaders actually really suck at campaigning, since Noda is a shy technocrat and Tanigaki is a demagogue whom nobody seems to actually like, but the spin machines that get set to motion in Japanese general elections are often pretty spectacular.

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More to come on minor parties and the Japanese voting system when I have time.

Thank you very much, Smid. We'll continue with an explanation of Japan's quasi-MMP system and small profiles of such parties as New Komeito, the political arm of the influential Nichiren sect of Japanese Buddhism with an ethos kind of like a Buddhist equivalent of the Christian Democratic parties of Europe; the Japanese Communist Party, one of the saner and more respectable such left in the world; Your Party, a very new libertarian reformist outfit led by LDP breakaways; and the Happiness Realization Party, the political arm of the Happy Science 'new religious movement' (i.e. cult that doesn't appear to be actively dangerous) and lately major international political allies of one Mr Herman Cain!

Japan has to have a general election, constitutionally, on or before 30 August 2013; knowing Japan it's very likely that the election will be at the earliest about a year from now, but it's still worthwhile starting a thread for it, I think, because trends in Japanese politics frequently take kind of a while to get going and then do not change particularly easily except with a change in Prime Ministers.

The main minor parties of interest are New Komeito (tl note: Komeito means Justice Party), the Japanese Communist Party, the Kizuna Party, the Social Democratic Party, Your Party, People's New Party/New Party Nippon (technically two parties, but treated essentially like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), the New Party Daichi--True Democrats, the Sunrise Party of Japan, the New Renaissance Party, and the Happiness Realization Party.

New Komeito was founded by members of the Nichiren Buddhist group Soka Gakkai International and is often thought of as its political arm despite the leadership and finances being independent (as is required by the constitutional separation of church and state, which applies to everything except the Imperial House, where the current High Priestess of Ise and head of the Association of Shinto Shrines is the Emperor's kid sister). It's center-right, a traditional coalition partner of the Liberal Democratic Party, and generally perceived as fairly transparent and non-corrupt (or less corrupt), at least historically. They've been the third party for a while now.

The Communists are moderate (for communists) and actually apathetic-to-vaguely-supportive of the Imperial House, whose existence they formerly opposed. They are very left-wing but committed to operating within a Japanese cultural context and were never very strongly associated with the Eastern Bloc. They have some popularity in lower-income suburbs, are committed to running competent women candidates in a strongly male-dominated political culture, and are the fourth-largest party in the Diet, but can be argued to not really stand for as much as they used to.

The Kizuna Party is a small liberal party that was founded earlier this year by DPJ breakaways for reasons that I don't really understand very well yet. They're the closest anybody here would get to being left-liberal or liberal in the modern American sense.

The Social Democratic Party is a successor to the formerly strong (as in, official opposition for about half a century) Socialist Party of Japan and kind of an adjunct to the Democratic Party, from which it is ideologically indistinguishable. Such constituency as it has is mainly bleeding hearts who don't want to vote Communist.

YP, PNP, and NPN are all to varying degrees right-wing parties (the first ostensibly libertarian and reformist, the other two populist) formed by LDP breakaways after some of Koizumi's more controversial decisions. They actually enjoy pretty good relationships with the left-leaning parties because of their iconoclasm relative to the mainstream Japanese right.

New Party Daichi--True Democrats are a ragtag bunch of misfits who got themselves expelled from other parties, led by a Hokkaido regionalist and former crooked LDP functionary called Suzuki Muneo who just got out of prison about six months ago. I like these guys a lot. They don't seem to stand for much beyond being a halfway-house to rehabilitate (or try to rehabilitate) their careers and reputations, but these True Democrats are a true underdog story.

New Renaissance and Sunrise are both somewhat scary, very small groups of right-wingers. New Renaissance is ostensibly neoliberal, and Sunrise is backed by the current Governor of Tokyo, which for anybody who knows anything about Japanese politics should say it all. For those who don't, Governor Ishihara is basically a Japanese Jan Brewer with pretensions to intellectualism because he wrote some misogynistic novels way back in the fifties.

The Happiness Realization Party is like New Komeito except for a cult called Happy Science, and some of their leaders recently met with Herman Cain.

Japan has to have a general election, constitutionally, on or before 30 August 2013; knowing Japan it's very likely that the election will be at the earliest about a year from now, but it's still worthwhile starting a thread for it, I think, because trends in Japanese politics frequently take kind of a while to get going and then do not change particularly easily except with a change in Prime Ministers.

Japan has to have a general election, constitutionally, on or before 30 August 2013; knowing Japan it's very likely that the election will be at the earliest about a year from now, but it's still worthwhile starting a thread for it, I think, because trends in Japanese politics frequently take kind of a while to get going and then do not change particularly easily except with a change in Prime Ministers.

Seriously, how many different PMs have they had since 1980? 20?

Since Koizumi left in 2006 they've had 6 PMs.

Yes, Kan was the first since then to serve more than a year. He lasted fourteen months! It's to be hoped Noda can actually serve in three (three!) calendar years, if not more considering what an ass Tanigaki is. Unless LDP replaces Tanigaki before the election...

I thought I'd bump this thread because of Ozawa Ichiro's recent behavior. He's the leader of a new 51-seat (I think) block that just broke from the DPJ today. It's not an official party yet but it's going to be; not clear what it's going to be called or what its ostensible platform is going to be, since Ozawa has no apparent beliefs or standards.

The Noda Government still has a majority but it's much more tenuous than anybody thought it was likely to get, something like 241/479 in the House of Representatives for the DPJ itself and 254/479 or so counting the SDP, PNP, NPN, and NPD 'allies' (such as they are).

I thought I'd bump this thread because of Ozawa Ichiro's recent behavior. He's the leader of a new 51-seat (I think) block that just broke from the DPJ today. It's not an official party yet but it's going to be; not clear what it's going to be called or what its ostensible platform is going to be, since Ozawa has no apparent beliefs or standards.

The Noda Government still has a majority but it's much more tenuous than anybody thought it was likely to get, something like 241/479 in the House of Representatives for the DPJ itself and 254/479 or so counting the SDP, PNP, NPN, and NPD 'allies' (such as they are).

I'm kind of surprised the numbers of his new block are that low. I'd at least expect all 57 DJP members he whipped into voting against the government's big consumption tax increase to leave; at most I'd expect the up to 140 or so who supported his candidates for DJP leadership to join him.

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dfwlibertylover oh God Dereich you are in for a rude awakening on November 8th lol

00:09 Wulfric Trump has seemed to have a lot of compassion for the poor at times

smilo Atlas is not a place for opinionssmilo Atlas is a place for satire

I thought I'd bump this thread because of Ozawa Ichiro's recent behavior. He's the leader of a new 51-seat (I think) block that just broke from the DPJ today. It's not an official party yet but it's going to be; not clear what it's going to be called or what its ostensible platform is going to be, since Ozawa has no apparent beliefs or standards.

The Noda Government still has a majority but it's much more tenuous than anybody thought it was likely to get, something like 241/479 in the House of Representatives for the DPJ itself and 254/479 or so counting the SDP, PNP, NPN, and NPD 'allies' (such as they are).

I'm kind of surprised the numbers of his new block are that low. I'd at least expect all 57 DJP members he whipped into voting against the government's big consumption tax increase to leave; at most I'd expect the up to 140 or so who supported his candidates for DJP leadership to join him.

The thing is, Noda isn't terribly popular (to an extent for entirely legitimate reasons, even though I'm about as sympathetic towards him as one can be under the circumstances) and not all of the people who were comfortable with following Ozawa into a situation that created an intraparty crisis in the ruling coalition are comfortable joining him in what looks to be an attempt to bring down the DPJ government outright for his own perceived gain. The Kaieda people from the most recent party leadership election I'm not so sure about, but Kaieda Banri's simply a lot more likable and honest than most people in Japanese politics even if his views are kind of nonsensical and awful (hence a lot of the Kaieda people probably genuinely are Kaieda people rather than Ozawa people), and if I had to guess I'd imagine he's probably regretting his support for Ozawa during the legal problems last year right about now.

Ozawa started from a place of a lot of goodwill within the membership of the DPJ but he's pissed it away even quicker than he did in the LDP twenty years ago. He makes his old mentor Tanaka Kakuei look comparatively aboveboard and on the level.

Update: Ozawa is now the head of 'People's Livelihood First: The Path of Independents', with 37 members of the House of Representatives.

Not only was he not able even to keep all of the people who initially defected with him several days ago, at least four or five of those people have since returned to the DPJ.

Party standings in the lower house (ruling party in bold, parties that to a greater or lesser extent are considered allied with the ruling party in italics):

Democratic Party of Japan ('Third Way', big-tent, could be considered Labour Right-esque in some systems): 250 (with the 'Independent Club')Liberal Democratic Party (conservative, almost Right-Hegelian, big-tent): 120 (with the 'Assembly of Independents')People's Livelihood First (Ozawa Ichiro appreciation life): 37 (aka the 'Path of Independents'. Noticing a theme?)New Kōmeitō (Nichiren Buddhist, religious conservatives in the Japanese context, center-right, allied with the LDP): 21Japanese Communist Party ('Eurocommunist' except it's not Europe): 9Kizuna Party (left-liberal, anti-consumption tax and anti-Trans-Pacific Partnership): 9Social Democratic Party ('Third Way' and more committedly so than the DPJ): 6 (with the 'Citizens' League')Your Party (neoliberal): 5People's New Party (populist, socially conservative but allied with the DPJ): 4New Party Daichi – True Democrats (ragtag bunch of misfits): 3Sunrise Party of Japan (nationalist in a somewhat worrying way): 2New Party Nippon (centrist, the 'Nippon' in English is insistent terminology): 1Tax Cuts Japan (tax cuts for Japan): 1

Speaker and Vice-Speaker: 2Independents: 9

The government and its allies such as they are now have a notional majority of 266-213 out of 479 members (there's one vacancy, I'm not sure where), counting the Speaker and Vice-Speaker since Japan to the best of my knowledge uses Speaker Denison's rule. Unclear how many of those 266 would defect and vote to bring down Noda if the rubber hit the road, considering how much open backstabbing there is within Japanese political parties relative to other Westminster systems.

A poll from 8-10 of June (and like with Italy, they actually bother with decimal numbers)No Party: 47.3% LDP-20.9% DPJ-16.9%Your Party-2.7%NKP-2.4%JCP-1.7%SDP-0.3%Others-1.3%Undecided-6.6%

If you take out the " no party" and "undecided" vote, that becomes:LDP-45.3%DPJ-36.7%Your Party-5.9%NKP-5.2%JCP-3.7%SDP-0.7%Others-2.8%

So...LDP landslide. Sheesh. You'd think small parties like the Social Democrats and Communists would be getting former DPJ supporters who are angry with how they've governed. Japan seems like the perfect breeding ground for equivalents of the Pirate Parties or the Movimento 5-Stelle. Or even the Monster Raving Loonies.

So...LDP landslide. Sheesh. You'd think small parties like the Social Democrats and Communists would be getting former DPJ supporters who are angry with how they've governed. Japan seems like the perfect breeding ground for equivalents of the Pirate Parties or the Movimento 5-Stelle. Or even the Monster Raving Loonies.

Japan doesn't strike me as the kind of country where a 5 Star Movement could ever take hold. If the Japanese were williing to vote for the LDP all the time over the last 30 years I don't see why they wouldn't vote for them now.

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dfwlibertylover oh God Dereich you are in for a rude awakening on November 8th lol

00:09 Wulfric Trump has seemed to have a lot of compassion for the poor at times

smilo Atlas is not a place for opinionssmilo Atlas is a place for satire

So...LDP landslide. Sheesh. You'd think small parties like the Social Democrats and Communists would be getting former DPJ supporters who are angry with how they've governed. Japan seems like the perfect breeding ground for equivalents of the Pirate Parties or the Movimento 5-Stelle. Or even the Monster Raving Loonies.

Japan doesn't strike me as the kind of country where a 5 Star Movement could ever take hold. If the Japanese were williing to vote for the LDP all the time over the last 30 years I don't see why they wouldn't vote for them now.

I've also wondered why the SD's or the Commies haven't seen a bump in support like they have in Europe.. is their a cultural disaffection with strongly or "true" leftwing parties? Its been what, since 90 that the old Socialists were in a strong position

I'd be interested to hear Nathan on this, but from what I've seen, if Japan was to get a true challenge to the two party system (not an add-on like NK) it would be from the far right, not the left. That's the natural anti-system protest votes reservoir in Japan.

That's unfortunately quite likely. Look at the success of Ishihara, for instance. He's a former LDP minister of some description but he's definitely positioned himself as a 'protest vote' at various points, even though to all outside observers he's about as Establishment as it's conceivably possible to be in Japan without having had a man with a corncob pipe throw him in the clinker when he was young. This is a man who's openly contemplated the eternal mystery of why women past their childbearing years bother to stay alive and he's in his fourth term as Governor of Tokyo, because he's not outright incompetent and voting for a total far-right lunatic, while not the best way to register one's displeasure with the main parties and their shenanigans, certainly isn't the worst.

Taking out the 'No party' and redistributing the rest of the polling numbers doesn't strike me as particularly useful, although it's undeniable that there's a lot of discontent with the DPJ. People don't really want the LDP back either. It remains to be seen how Ozawa Ichiro Appreciation Life will affect this. Japan polls pretty sparingly and it's kind of all over the place. Personally I'd prefer an LDP government even though I really kind of despise Tanigaki Sadakazu. If it's depressingly impossible for a non-LDP government to get reelected it's best that Ozawa stay as far away from anywhere he can do damage as possible.

July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Government officials close toJapanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told senior members ofthe Liberal Democratic Party, the biggest opposition group, thata general election will be held before the end of this year,Kyodo News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

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Chinese from Taiwan Province. Now in New York City suburb of Scarsdale. Ex-GOP now Libertarian.The important thing is not how they vote but how we count. - Stalin

LDP will be back after the next election. But watch out for Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dru_Hashimoto). He represent a new force on a political scene where people are fed up with the two major parties. He is for easing the Constitution's war-renouncing Article 9 and might tie up with Ozawa's new party. I think this change in policy for Japan makese sense. Even as a Chinese nationalist with my differences with Japan's past I feel that Japan should be able to be normal country with a normal military and independent foreign policy. Just how long can one beat up a country over what happen back in WWII.

« Last Edit: July 07, 2012, 10:18:57 am by jaichind »

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Chinese from Taiwan Province. Now in New York City suburb of Scarsdale. Ex-GOP now Libertarian.The important thing is not how they vote but how we count. - Stalin

Yukio Hatoyama, a former prime minister and force in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, indicated Saturday there is a possibility he might back a no-confidence motion if the opposition submitted one against Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's administration, increasing the chances of the Noda government falling and a snap election being called. Hatoyama, whose party membership was suspended this week as punishment for voting against sales tax hike legislation that passed the House of Representatives last week, has formed a study group with about 20 other DPJ members of similar status. Ichiro Ozawa and 36 other lower house members resigned from the ruling party, as they faced expulsion for also voting against the tax bill. "The Noda administration has moved far from the DPJ's original policies," Hatoyama said in answer to a question after a lecture in Beijing. "There are many points I cannot agree with." But Hatoyama said it was not clear how we would vote if a no-confidence motion were brought against the Noda government. "From my policy standpoint of having opposed the tax hike bill, I have some inclination to side with a no-confidence motion, but the situation does not allow me to easily come to a conclusion," he said. If Hatoyama's group wholly backed a no-confidence motion, the ruling coalition of Noda's DPJ and the tiny People's New Party could fail to block it and Noda could be forced to either have his Cabinet resign en masse or to dissolve the lower house for a general election.

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Chinese from Taiwan Province. Now in New York City suburb of Scarsdale. Ex-GOP now Libertarian.The important thing is not how they vote but how we count. - Stalin

Does Hashimoto have any traction outside Kansai, though? From what I'd heard, he wants to basically be the new Ishihara, making Osaka into his own fief.

For now I think he will keep his activities in the KinKi region. But KinKi region is quite large and he is on his way to being the largest political force there. He will very likely form alliances with other political forces in the next Diet elections as well making him a national figure if his block makes breakthroughs.

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Chinese from Taiwan Province. Now in New York City suburb of Scarsdale. Ex-GOP now Libertarian.The important thing is not how they vote but how we count. - Stalin

Recent events are a little irritating to me as a supporter of such a left as Japan has (and also somebody who wanted to be in Japan for the next election next summer!), but certainly not entirely surprising, and it's probable that the Goddamn LDP will be in power again. The most we can hope out of such an incidence is no [Inks]ing Trans-Pacific Parternship, and that is a big maybe.

I'm in agreement with Mikado on the subject of Hashimoto. Stylistically he's rather like a non-senescent, Osakan Ishihara and I think that's his game plan. Both of Japan's largest cities being run by far-right nutjobs doesn't sit especially well with me but it's better than them having national power. It's easy to underestimate how insane someone like Hashimoto really is and while that can a good way to entrench yourself locally in Japan it's not a usual route to national power, especially if it involves aligning oneself with Ozawa.

Also, Article 9 has quite a bit of traction in the Japanese public. I'm not sure of any polling numbers but at least a very large segment of Japan rightly sees its pacifist constitution as a national treasure, regardless of the circumstances of its imposition. The political will is for loosening of relations with the United States, not a return to the days of a standing Imperial Army.